Migrating to Oracle: How Assurity Cloud, QA & Testing helped ensure success.


SECTOR / INDUSTRY
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CASE STUDY PDF
OVERVIEW
When a prominent government agency sought to introduce Oracle Cloud Applications into its operations, it put out a Request for Proposal for Quality Assurance and Testing. Assurity Consulting was chosen based on its track record of success in Inland Revenue’s digital transformation.
Leveraging their extensive testing expertise and the innovative Assurity Cloud platform, the Assurity team seamlessly collaborated with the agency, its implementation partner, and the vendor Oracle to ensure an efficient project delivery.
KEY OUTCOMES
ABOUT THE CLIENT
The client is a major government agency established in 2018 in response to changing population needs, economic realities, and social factors to serve the people of Aotearoa New Zealand, better.
THE CHALLENGE
Introducing a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system presents opportunities and challenges. The opportunity arises from the ‘greenfield’ approach, which offers a clean slate to design a tailored solution. The challenge for the agency is establishing the full stack of enterprise applications necessary for running and managing complex organisations with nationwide reach.

Focused on quality, the agency assessed the testing market for a partner to ensure the new ERP and HR system deployments were up to scratch. Assurity stood out with its extensive engagements, notably the Quality Assurance it provided to Inland Revenue, which included an innovative software and systems quality evaluation approach.
Partnering with Assurity also added further capabilities in the form of a Project Management Office, Agile development, and a test practice, which the agency needed to include.
The agency’s management appreciated the necessity for care and diligence in the rollout of new enterprise systems, taking advantage of the greenfield implementation to start with a best-practice approach. This gave business owners confidence that the systems and applications would perform as expected, particularly in the wake of customisation, integration, and configuration efforts.

OUR SOLUTION
Assurity Consulting created a Test Strategy aligned with and encompassing the agency’s organisational goals and complete applications environment. At the outset, Assurity noted that along with the agency’s establishment, several software functions were rapidly implemented as interim workarounds ahead of delivering longer-term strategic solutions. In addition to Quality Assurance for the now-introduced Oracle applications, Assurity also addressed process optimisation and helped eliminate spreadsheets and manual workarounds.
The test methodology included build and test activities for infrastructure and platform commissioning, following the delivery of a stable, integrated base solution by the agency’s ERP implementation partner, including validation of hardware, operating systems, network integration, security protocols and interoperability elements. As the testing partner, Assurity performed Quality Assurance and evaluation of all external integrations and facilitated User Acceptance Testing (UAT). It also validated data migrations supporting reporting integrity and compatibility between old sources drawn in from predecessor organisations and new systems.
While the establishment phase demands rigorous initial Quality Assurance and Testing, ERP and HR systems are subject to continuous change. The vendor Oracle publishes quarterly updates while changing operational and political climates necessitate change. To address these ongoing requirements, Assurity created enduring test assets hosted in the Assurity Cloud.
RESULTS
The immediate result of the engagement with Assurity is the delivery of fit-for-purpose Oracle Cloud ERP and HR systems resting on a complex implementation with multiple integrations and dependencies. For an organisation with no test capability, accessing these services ‘on demand’ is rapid and effective. By taking a Quality Assurance mindset from the outset of its enterprise applications implementations, the agency has established a foundation of quality on which future initiatives rest.

As the agency has embraced a cloud-first approach, the Assurity Cloud and enduring test assets are recognised as appropriate, powerful, and an ongoing advantage in the interests of software and systems integrity. By managing and holding the organisation’s test cases, orchestrating continuous testing in response to changes or software updates, and delivering easily-digested test results, the agency enjoys predictable quality control, which fits within assigned budgets and timeframes.